Lana Del Rey “Born to Die”

“There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011.” (-Chris Hedges)

“Among the biggest lies we are told on a regular basis are: (1) All of your fellow citizens are stupid, apathetic sheeple who do not now and never will “get it”. and (2) Resistance is futile– the powers that be are so entrenched there is no hope of reform or restoration of a government of the people. So, unplug your TVs, talk to your neighbors and get organized. Realizing those two lies are lies might be half the battle.” (-Noam Chomsky)

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” (― Kurt Vonnegut)

“In return for my book, a truthful account of my year in Iraq, my security clearance was taken away … and, as I write this, I am drifting through the final steps toward termination. … I find myself a member of a new club I don’t even remember applying for: The Whistleblowers. … In meeting my club-mates, I learned that whistleblowers are not born, but created by a government with much to hide and an unquenchable need to hide it.” (– Peter Van Buren)

“The Obama administration, which arrived in Washington promoting ‘sunshine’ in government, turned out to be committed to silence and the censoring of less- than-positive news about its workings. … it has gone after whistleblowers and leakers with ever increasing fierceness, both in court and inside the halls of various government agencies.”(– Van Buren)

“[The Obama administration] is actually prosecuting them, and doing so under the Espionage Act – one of the most serious charges that can be leveled against an American.” (– Jesselyn Raddack)

”I am far from a perfect individual. More prone to bad behavior and poor decision making than most at times I would figure. I still have debt, insurance payments, and a Verizon cellphone (only one that gets service where I live, kind of). None of us are perfect, me most of all. What I am saying is that we need to start working towards not being a part of the system we seek to change. We have to get away from debt, credit, corporations, and bad banking. Use cash, cash doesn’t give tiny bits of your money to companies like Visa. If you can’t afford to pay for it with the money you have, you don’t need it. Avoid giving your hard earned money to companies that lobby against human rights, education, information and health-care, such as Wal-Mart, Comcast, the Government, US Bank, And the Bank of sold out the world and now we want your home, your car, your children to worship us and your soul wile we are at it. Little decisions can have a huge impact on the world we live in. As Activists fighting these wrongs it is our responsibility to represent this in our own lives. Help me in doing this by living the messages we scream as we march down the block. Otherwise it not only falls on deaf ears, and sinister and uncaring eyes that will just continue to greedily smile from the other side of tinted windows; knowing that it all means nothing in the end. Reuse, if you can. Recycle if it makes sense. Buy used if possible, buy local, and use cash unless its not an option at the time. These are examples of small local decisions that can have massive impacts on the economy. Not everything we need to do can be done in this way, I understand this fact of modern life as well as all of you. Still, think about this. If you spend 5,000 dollars a year in cash getting dishes, blankets, books and other needed items from local junk stores and retailers instead of chains like soul sucking Greedmeyers that looks at you like a target in a safe way because they say it all has to do with good will and low prices, you not only help provide a living to local families, but you have taken money away from companies that seek to use it against you. This is a fantastic thing, as it impacts the flow of goods, money and shifts the buying and purchasing power away from Washington INC. and back to the people. Let’s stand together and make the decision to do this as a community rooted in a common goal for the betterment of all folks.

Even a few can make a big difference when they stand together and I know with time we can and will make a difference on the world. By standing together, changing ourselves, our own lives, we will build the skills and the know how to survive in this world and in turn be able to educate our children to do the same. Thank you all, it has been and will continue to be an honor to stand at your sides regardless of the occasional disagreement in understanding and perspective.” (-Joshua Mcwhorter)

“I believe Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in during the eight months he was in Quantico.” (-United Nations torture rapporteur, Juan Mendez)

“Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.” (– Michael Moore in speech to Wisconsin occupation, March 5, 2011)

“Those who have never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom we outwrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope.” (-Dr. Cornel West)

“When pursuit of self-interest is allowed to run unchecked, it can lead to socially pernicious outcomes.” (- Paul Piff)

“As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist.” (-Sitting Bull)

“The NDAA and the drone authorization are 100 times a bigger story than Watergate. The longer the establishment media ignores this, the greater the public outrage.” (- David Seaman)

“Dennis Kucinich was a voice of sanity after 9/11, cautioning against lashing out at the world. He led the effort in Congress opposing George Bush’s Iraq War. His October 2002 analysis of the call for war against Iraq stands today as a statement of clarity of vision and courage which, if heeded, would have spared the lives of US soldiers and Iraqi citizens alike. His was a relentless challenge to the rationale for the war and a call for accountability for those who lied to drag us into the war. You may remember that it was Kucinich who led the effort to try to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney for their fabrications, prevarications, and other misstatements. When others were promising ‘permanent war for permanent peace’ Kucinich was the one who pointed out the idiocy and the hypocrisy. In the past decade, Kucinich opposed not only the war in Iraq, he voted against every single funding bill for war, whether Iraq or Afghanistan. It was Kucinich who again rose up to create a rare bipartisan coalition to thwart the war against Libya for a time. As the fundamentalists now take hold there, once again the question arises, why did we go into Libya? What was that really about?
Today, the neocons again are attempting to rush America into a war against Iran. It was Kucinich who took to the floor of the House in debate to knock down again and again the false claims that were being made to try to justify sanctions which could lead to still another war.” (-Gore Vidal)

“I sometimes look at myself, I’m sitting with a biro and a cigarette packet, desperately scrawling dribble on it. And sometimes I put down my fag pack and think, what am I, a grown man, doing at this hour of the night? Then I banish that thought, pick the fag pack up again.” (-Joe Strummer)

“As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence.” (- Henry A. Giroux)

‎”All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological person…alities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corrupt-able. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.” (-Frank Herbert)

“Everyone is so angry about paying $4.00 for a gallon of gas, but many are willing to buy water for $2.00/liter (or more!). It takes more than 3 liters to equal a gallon, making water significantly more expensive than gasoline. Why aren’t people more angry about the cost of water?

Also, most of this water – despite pretty pictures of mountains on the labels – is just city tap water run through a filter and then bottled in plastic (which is arguably as dangerous for the environment as the impact of burning fuel).

Ever notice that EVIAN spelled backwards is NAIVE?” (Marcus Farley)

“Once we were enslaved, we thought of all the things we could have done to stop them.” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

”I have never seen a political or social movement catch fire this fast. I’ve lived hrough enough of them and knew about those that came before me. … This movement, in six weeks, had a majority of Americans with us. What we are blessed with with Occupy Wall Street is that the hardest part of the job is done.” (– Michael Moore at the Left Forum, March 17th, 2012)

“Believe me: you don’t want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations. The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.
One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium – where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as this are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.” (-Naomi Wolf)

“Source advised that the females of the anarchist’s movement are in leadership positions in Eugene, Oregon. These females are described as being very feminist and militant.” (- FBI documents from investigation Seizing Thunder)

“By now, you’d think we’d be entering the end of the 9/11 era. Yet warning signs abound that 2012 will be another year in which, in the name of national security, [our] rights and liberties are only further Guantanamo-ized and abridged. … there is now a new enemy in our sights: namely, American oppositional types and whistleblowers who are charged as little short of traitors for revealing the workings of our government to journalists and others.” (– Karen Greenberg)

“The Federal Government is unrelenting in its attack on our Freedoms. In a period of less than three months, legislation has been passed to permit the indefinite detainment of US citizens, to permit the use of aerial drones for police surveillance, and now, to illegalize various forms of dissent.

I don’t see what choice we have but to mount one of the oldest forms of resistance to tyranny, one that was deployed successfully when American colonists fought against the British regime. We must boycott the Federal government. We should be developing ways to organize massive tax-resistance. The IRS is the epicenter of monetary acquisition for the Federal government–it is by our taxes that the US government wages its wars, imprisons its enemies and assaults our freedoms. We must not support this machine any longer!” (-John Monroe)

“It’s hard to overstate how oppressive it is for the U.S. Government to be able to target journalists, film-makers and activists and, without a shred of suspicion of wrongdoing, learn the most private and intimate details about them and their work: with whom they’re communicating, what is being said, what they’re reading. That’s a radical power for a government to assert in general. When it starts being applied not randomly, but to people engaged in activism and journalism adverse to the government, it becomes worse than radical: it’s the power of intimidation and deterrence against those who would challenge government conduct in any way. The ongoing, and escalating, treatment of Laura Poitras is a testament to how severe that abuse is.

If you’re not somebody who films the devastation wrought by the U.S. on the countries it attacks, or provides insight into Iraqi occupation opponents and bin Laden loyalists in Yemen, or documents expanding NSA activities on U.S. soil, then perhaps you’re unlikely to be subjected to such abuses and therefore perhaps unlikely to care much. As is true for all states that expand and abuse their own powers, that’s what the U.S. Government counts on: that it is sending the message that none of this will affect you as long as you avoid posing any meaningful challenges to what they do. In other words: you can avoid being targeted if you passively acquiesce to what they do and refrain from interfering in it. That’s precisely what makes it so pernicious, and why it’s so imperative to find a way to rein it in.” (-Glenn Greenwald)

“When an old culture is dying, the new culture is created by those people who are not afraid to be insecure.” (- Rudolph Bahro)

‎”There is nothing to avoid, nothing to escape, nothing to fear. There is just off-on, in-out, start-stop, light-dark, flash-delay. Death, void, oblivion is the split-second pause. I accept the off. It is of interest that the heroin addict and the Illuminated Buddha end up at the same place. The void. The junkie is a deeply religious person. The alcoholic is too. Thus our physicians and psychiatrists have no luck in ‘curing’ addicts. If you see an addict as a social misfit, a civic nusiance who must be rehabilitated you completely miss the point. To cure the junkie and the alcoholic, you must humbly accept that s/he is a more deeply spiritual person than you, and you accept the cosmic validity of his search to transcend the game, and you help him see that blackout drugs are just bad game because you can’t just keep holding the off switch…” (-Timothy Leary)

DIET MTN DEW….

It’s been a long time since I was suspended from the suburban school-bus for playing “Be My Girl Sally” by those edgey-punks, the Police, or got an in-school suspension for alledgedly starting the meanspirited rumour that Mike Reno from Loverboy was dead, and then, bringing all my sleep-over cronies from the downtown school district with me to Saturday school in boozh suburbia, or shocked my dull-witted, Catholic School peers by dyeing my hair and piercing my nose, but it’s Friday night, and I’m listening to Duran Duran, recalling what it was like, to kiss a Bardot lookalike, in the midwestern suburbs, and start my first ill-starred punk band with a motley assortment of local skinheads, British hardcores, Judas Priest metal-shredders, and Inxs and the Cure fans. Those kids meant everything to me, ya know? Spanky and Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat, and Froggy, but they all assimilated into TV sports fan Americana, while I stayed underground, so we don’t really have much of anything in common, anymore. Even our ideas of what punk rock is have changed. Their idea? Rigorous conformity, middle-class popularity, and perhaps, most importantly, property: houses full of extensive collections, dusted, bagged, and alphabetized with Smithsonian care. Recording studios in the basement, hot-tubs on the sun-deck, fully-financed “hot rod” bands, Coronas with the Bengals watchers on sports-bar sized TV’s, big white trucks. They get a lot of their ideas from cable news sources. They work for evil corporations, and have signed secrecy agreements, or they labor in the ceaselessly sinister medical industry. My idea of punk is somewhat different.

With a few crucial exceptions, the people I grew up with have become a buncha complacent, numb, lethargic, gullible, selfish robots. Slaves of big-pharma, big-food, big-media, and the big globalist, depopulating, war-machine. Hummer driving, cable subscribing, burger kings vomiting forth Bill O’Reilly talking points. Some became cops and soldiers. Some even think there’s a significant difference between the two-party dictatorship’s various political puppets. Has Obama freed Bradley Manning? Has Obama free Leonard Peltier? Has Obama decriminalized pot, or held B.P., torturers, Monsanto, or Wall Street accountable for crimes against humanity? Has Obama done anything for the peace-loving, liberal and progressive majority that voted for him? The extremist far-right neo-con hawks of the Obama White House tell us there is no war on Islam, but they keep bombing Muslim nations, killing all the men, along with plenty of women and children-roughly fifteen per drone attack, for every so-called fighter, assassinated by remote control, they keep having Halliburton build big prisons, torturing so-called insurgents, and here at home, entrapping and spying on Muslim students. The deluded public, primarily concerned about “just three easy payments” on QVC, or Randy Jackson’s opinion regarding some celebrity relative’s proper-pitch, because we all know that proper-pitch strictly defines talent, right, J-lo, Paula Abdul, etc., etc. ???…And is Chelsea Kardashian really O.J.’s daughter? Will Blake Shelton allow Ron Paul to stay on the island until the next rose ceremony? Find out on this week’s episode of, “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” When I was just into like, 120 Minutes/KROQ style MTV new wave-the Cult and the Alarm, Big Country, New Model Army, Killing Joke, and Dexy’s Midnite Runners, some of my cronies had older siblings already in college, who had access to faraway big-city record stores, and they made these awesome “new music” compilation tapes, that first turned us onto ska, English punk, Oi, D.C. straight-edge, Athens jangle, paisley underground, dream-pop, skinny-tie pop, political hardcore, synth-rock, goth, pre-shoegaze mope-pop, but most strangely, nowadays, wow…these are the very same chicken-wing inhalers and frat-boy befrienders who quote rightwing talk-radio all day, and have, collectively, decided they’re too cool for defiant losers still in poverty. It’s not a friend-ly time, ya know? I got involved in a crazy recovery-cult a few years back, reached-out to summa the old gang, wantin’ to make amends, bury the hatchet, rekindle the good old flame…boy do I regret that choice.

Mike Davis just died, now, Davy Jones, and Rich Teeter, the old Dictators drummer. No one talks about the NDAA blackbagging law, now in effect, or the House passing that venal Trespass bill making all protest illegal in the vicinity of anyone protected by Secret Service. Sadly, it’s all preoccupation with cable unreality-what Michael Moore memorably called, “wepons of mass distraction”, in my shrinking circle of former associates.They all talk about Lifestyles Of The Rich & Talentless, or their beauty regiment, or video-games, or whatever they last purchased, online. That’s about it. Sports and weather. They are the TV people.

Wanted to get my semi-annual tattoo, but new health dept. law dictates they photo-copy pictures of every client’s valid state photo i.d., or face huge fines, so after much hardship and negotiating and arriving at local tattoo shop, was devastated to learn I hadda have a current i.d. in hand, in spite of being so significantly, and conspicuously over eighteen. Unreal. You need a permission slip from the government to make any move, whatsoever. Unless you’re a one percenter war profiteer, then, it’s open season on human rights and the enviornment-you can destroy whoever you want. Shoot people, spy on people, strip search ‘em, taser ‘em, radiate ‘em, poison the food, pollute the sky, dominate elections via the corrupt media. Rape and torture. Those plutocrats and oligarchs never stop babbling about the “need for deregulation”, but when it comes to harmless and therapeutic drugs, vitamins, raw milk, women’s reproductive health, adult consensual sex, or getting a motherfucking tattoo, all we the people get are more regulations. Outlawing protest, criminalizing dissent. Blank check for banksters. Blankcheck for Hallibuton burn-pits and employee rapes. Blank check for Blackwater war crimes. Bank check for Netanyahu human rights violations. Blank check for government authorities to kill us on our couches, imprison us with no trial for life, dump death into the sky. No labelling for G.M.O.’s. Are you eating cloned meat? Links found between dental x-rays and brain tumors but Chertoff’s porno-scanners are “safe”? Get real. It’s all backasswards. A wilderness of mirrors, upside down and inside out, bizarro world. The government’s been hijacked by powerful and evil, anti-democratic forces. Bradblog reports that the lost Kucinich election was clearly rigged, not just by gerrymandering or Republican redistricting, but by hackable voting boxes. Again. Mainstream morons aren’t paying attention to anything but cable and mindless consumption. Go War. Rah rah.

A small-town kid involved with the Occupy movement had found a consoling sanctuary, in the briefly flickering, protest villages of the Northwest. When the encampment was shut-down by pigs by order of the DHS, and he was put on a bus back to Michigan, he took his own life, saying he had no desire to conform to midwestern definitions of “normal”, or give up his “magic”. Rainy day, listening to Morrissey’s “Your Arsenal”, thinking about fickle former flames and friends with their sliding scale morality and stern judgements of the weird and poor and am utterly affected by one more suicide. What a suck shit culture. Goldman Sachs and the government with their military might and democide agenda against the common people. I got no time for people who make excuses for fascism. Gasoline is higher than four bucks a gallon and cable zombies still think something is “trickling down” to them. The banks and corportions are KILLING the middle class, with their endless lay-offs, illegal forecosures, and sky-rocketing medical bills. Most of our Republicrat lawmakers saw Animal House and thought the Omegas and Dean Wermer were the good guys. Print media is dead, the internet is a surveillance grid. Over forty million Americans are in poverty. You can’t get work writing or as a broadcaster for big-media, unless you are an eager party to their deceptions and rightwing propaganda. Dissenting voices are banished from the air-waves: Cenk of The Young Turks, Bill Maher, libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, Dan Rather, Phil Donahue, Helen Thomas, and Keith Olbermann were all “Dixie Chicked” for their anti-war views, or stories exposing government corruption. Charlie Sheen spoke-out about 9/11, challenging the official story, and had cops raid his home, while he was butchered by the mainstream press for months at a time, around the clock, saturation coverage, slandering him for his Van Halenesque, Hollywood playboy lifestyle, overwhelming character assassination. Not a PEEP on the cable shows about NDAA. Even certain punk zines have openly discouraged contributors from writing about any of these events, instead, focusing on TMZ tabloid gossip, unreality shows, and gratuitously sucking up to various apolitical, aged, celebrity, ex punk rockers, and their ex lovers. Let’s say you’re a middle-class, college graduate, property owner. Do you prefer to rationalize that Obama is looking out for you somehow, or ya wanna hear Alex Jones barking atchu about FEMA camps, like your redneck Dad after his fourth Scotch? They all like form over substance. Cable brainwashing over hard, cold facts. I know dutiful Obamabots, who find it easier to believe that the A.C.L.U., Amnesty Internationsl, Black Agenda Report dot com, Democracy Now, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Cynthia McKinney, Jeremy Scahill, Dr. Cornel West, and Ralph Nader are “working for Romney”, rather than admit that Obama is a face for the banksters and the security-appartus, war-machine.

TSA isn’t just groping you in the airports anymore-the same Superme Court that selected Bush/Cheney and decalre corporations citizens has now said the cops can strip you up anytime they want for any reason. Obama promised to close Gitmo, but instead, he’s allowing military trials to take place there, of various tortured “terror suspects”, who the Bush/Cheney gang waterboarded hundreds of times, before “getting confessions”. AGAIN, middle-class TV watchers REFUSE to acknowledge the seamless continuity of agenda between these last two Presidential administrations. Rahm Emmanuel and Michael Bloomberg are crushing democratic dissent, Netanyahu-style.

I know people who have developed intense allergies, who blaze through contact lenses, whose noses constantly run like faucets, but any mention of the brazenly visible cris-cross of chem trails overhead is routinely met with the ever skeptical “tin hat” jokes from the TV sheeple and faithful Obamabots. Don’t talk about torture, assassination authorizations, Gitmo, Fema camps, GMO’s, vaccines, NDAA, indefinite detention, forced strip-searches, taser deaths, police brutality, the leaked collateral muder video of shameless war crimes, the flotilla massacres, the children of Gaza, or TSA gaterape. Trust the handsome teleprompter reading figureheads. I mentioned a violent taser incident to an ex rebel pal of mine, and he’s so doped up on his middle-class privilege, he suggested the honor-student protester had it coming. For daring to question an elected official on a college campus. He was “asking for it”. They’ve all been programmed by that Bill O’Reilly tough talk. Bully speak is the common language in a totalitarian clampdown. As an artist and a former bon vivant, I used to consort with individuals from all backgrounds, all classes. The stinking rich all know the fix is in. The upwardly grasping middle-class still obediantly repeat all those wornout cliche’s devised by social engineering, rightwing think tanks, and repeated constantly in the consolidated media to justify the transfer of wealth from the many to the few. I can’t get along with TV watchers at this point-I just don’t possess the patience, or diplomacy. Arguing with Fox news watchers, or their Obamabot counterparts is just futile. One notes how most college educated people continue to excuse Bush policy under Obama, and the media refers to him as a moderate, when in fact, a politician who authorizes assassinations without trial, and indefinite detention, is obviously an extremist, people are afraid to acknowledge that he is asserting dictatorial powers because they don’t wish to be portrayed as racist tea party nut-jobs. The fact remains. Tyranny under Bush/Cheney, or tyranny under Obama, or Romney, is still tyranny. The culture-war wedge issues like smut, or gays in the military, or immigration, is just a distraction to divide the common people from uniting. The big-media loves ratcheting up sexism, racism, and homophobia in an election year. All jive ass strategies to take our eyes off of homeland security buying all those bullets, and the NDAA and Obama openly bragging about unconditionally supporting the Israeli navy’s attack on humanitarian aid-vessels in international waters at AIPAC. No one wants another war. Except Netanyahu, and Blackwater, Cheney, and the war profiteers. The people don’t want a war. www.warisacrime.org

VIDEO GAMES….

MANUFACTURED MUSIC has never sucked so bad-it’s the sonic equivalent of the pink slime, found in your jails, institutions, fast food death burgers and public school lunches. Aspartame pop. Some so-called punk zines even celebrate that shit. Most of today’s music is so bad it makes me nostalgic for the PET SHOP BOYS. It’s been a long time since a drowsy sex kitten caught my ear, with that appealing Mazzy Starr ingenue vibe, at least since Nouvelle Vague were doing all those dreamy heroin versions of old punk clasics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KitcvxK9bzU

…but Lana Del Ray is one of the only lamestream sensations I’ve liked even “vaguely” in many years. Is she just another anasthetic techno pop tart churned-out by the consolidated-media’s illuminati assembly-line? No tellin’, but she does cite Britney Spears as an influence. www.vigilantcitizen.com Look for occult symbols in her pics-black and white checkered floors, obscured left eyes, pyramids, etc., etc., for clues, if you’d like. It’s a good sign, perhaps, if corporate anchorman, war propagandist, and Jimmy Fallon sidekick, Brian Williams dislikes her. Myself, I always love torchy music, she’s a beauty, has an awesome voice. I saw her on SNL, and she didn’t seem any less dynamic to me, than any other current music act. I mean, some people like Lady Gaga’s warmed-over Madonna rewrites. Even Creem magazine and Detroit Metro Times great, Bill Holdship, somehow fell for Gaga. Not me, man. I do like Lana Del Ray because she has that yearning, sad, sultry, Hope Sandoval/Chris Isaak heartbreak twang to her songs, even when she dabbles with modern beats. ….Can’t help it. I like her. So does Axl Rose.